grahamdavies.net

Majestouch Ninja

30 May 2014

Well I have now reached a new level of geekery with my latest computer-related
acquisition. The Filco Majestouch Ninja Tenkeyless, to give it it’s full name,
scores high on the hacker scale for several reasons. Firstly, it is a
mechanical keyboard, which has the feel and sound of the ‘proper’ keyboards of
old. Without noticing it we have settled for soft, squidgy membrane keyboards
that have neither satisfying tactile feedback nor pleasing (philistines would
say annoying) audible click. I went the whole hog and opted for the Cherry MX
Blue switches, which are the most clicky and tactile of the bunch - why mess
about.

Added to this, the Ninja badge alludes to the absence of any letters on the tops
of the keys - so when viewed from above the keyboard looks to have completely
blank, black keys - devoid of all expression, help or clue as to their motives
or function. However, just like a true ninja (who unfortunately do not have
magical powers - see Mythbusters episodes on the matter), if you look carefully
enough you will find their whereabouts because the lettering is very neatly
etched (no doubt using ‘frickin lasers’ on the faces of the keys. As this will
be used as a standing desk keyboard the letters are fairly useless anyway - so I
may as well suck it up and learn to touch type with all the keys.

By now you may have realised that this rambling post is simply a good excuse to
try out this new gadget - suffice to say I am thus far very pleased. It goes
very well with Vim - an environment where a single click can be the difference
between adding a new word and deleting everything above your cursor (e.g. Esc -
dgg).

Weirdly the keyboard ships with the Windows keys with logos on the tops of the
keys but they provide you with extra ‘ninja’ Windows keys and tool to remove
the keys. I can only assume that Microsoft must have some clauses in their
license of the drivers that insists on Windows keys being displayed - very odd.
Suffice to say - non-ninja Windows keys were removed with alacrity.